Foxes (19 page)

I’m shaking with how nervous I am—not because what I’m saying isn’t true, but because I’m trying not to hide like I usually do. Letting the receptionist see my face, just looking at her without my veil of hair hiding my eyes feels risky, though these past few weeks I’m beginning to see that not everyone tries hard to avoid me if they see my scars. It’s as if with some people, if I act shy, they act shy, but if I try to act normal, then sometimes other people try to act normal too. Dashiel used to say this sort of thing to me all the time. He used to say those people who acted like they didn’t want to talk to me weren’t worth talking to anyway. I wish I could have believed him back then. I wish he weren’t gone.

“What’s his name, dear?”

“Dieter Blake,” I say, giving Dieter my own surname. “He fell in the Thames two days ago, and he was unconscious when he was brought in. I think he might have used a different surname when he came round as he’s worried about our dad finding him.”

It’s completely awful how easily I lie.

“Dieter?” she repeats, tapping away at the keyboard. I find myself counting the pointy clips pinning her white hair on top of her head. “I have a Dieter brought in two days ago who was taken up to Elm Ward this morning….” My chest expands in relief. “How old is your brother?”

“Twenty,” I say, guessing.

Well, my guess can’t be too far off, as she draws me a little map on a scrap of paper and points me in the right direction.

THE WARD
is on the second floor. The door has an intercom that crackles, and a nurse buzzes me in before I even tell her my full name.

I wander through a series of rooms cordoned off by curtains and fake walls. I try not to look at any of the people lying in bed. Most of them look old. One woman shouts, “Help,” over and over in a really weak voice. I stop and wonder if I should go get a nurse to help her, but as I look around for someone in a uniform, an old lady with shaky cold fingers and skin like silk reaches for my hand.

“She’s been shouting that ever since they brought her in here. All day and all night, on and on and on. Drives most of us crazy, it does,” she says.

“Why doesn’t anyone help her, then?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. Her mind’s gone.”

“She’s asking for help.”

“She’s just unhappy to be here. When the nurses ask her what’s wrong, she carries on shouting. When any of us ask her, the same. You can’t help everyone, dear.”

I keep walking through the ward, my eyes scanning the beds. I don’t like seeing people like this. I’m relieved when I spot Dieter. His bed is in the middle of a small cordoned-off room. He’s not asleep. Most of the other patients have visitors, or a bedside cabinet piled with flowers or food or magazines. Dieter has nothing. His sharp eyes fix on me, his expression a little shocked.

I have no plan what to say to him, I only know I need to be here, to see him. I stop at the end of his bed and don’t sit down. He stares at me as if he’s not sure why I’m here either. For once I meet his gaze without hesitation, and that’s when I remember what he said to me before he fell. The words hit me like a punch in the gut.

I saw him that night. I lied.

It’s as if this has been on the edge of my memory, bothering me for days, and seeing Dieter again has hauled it to the surface. My legs feel suddenly weak.

“Why did you lie about Dashiel?” I ask, surprised my voice doesn’t sound as shaky as I feel. “Why did you lie to the police?”

Do you know who killed him?
The question trembles through me, but I can’t get the words out.

“A simple hello would be nice,” he replies with a sort of hollow weariness that probably comes from lying in bed all day with no one to talk to, and perhaps from the realization that he nearly died. “Then again, you’ve probably never had a normal conversation in your life.”

I squeeze my eyes to stop the sudden wave of anger raging through me—not anger at Dieter, but anger at myself. Dieter looks pitiful. Without his wig, I barely recognize him as the same person who taunted me. He always told everyone I was weak and pathetic, but it was all just a cover.

“Are you thirsty?” I move around his bed to reach the untouched plastic jug of water on his bedside cabinet. I pour him a glass and hold it out to him.

He eyes me warily.

When he takes the glass, he barely has the strength to bring his arm up to his mouth, but he gulps the water down in one as though he hasn’t had a drink all day.

I’ve never felt so conflicted about someone. He’s hurting and I want to help him. Yet… he doesn’t even try to veil his disgust of me, and he lied to me about the one person who meant more than anything to me.

Dashiel deserved a fucking beautiful life. He was the first person I’d let close to me in as long as I can remember. He made my world a little bigger. Showed me it’s okay to be a bit weird. Showed me someone could love me exactly the way I am.

Maybe Dieter has never had someone show him that. Maybe that’s why he’s so mean. In my mind all I see is Dieter lashing out because he’s hurt, and somehow that vision has rendered me immune to his venom.

“Do you feel okay?” I ask.

“Think I preferred you when you were the weird-looking, silent kid who followed Dash around.”

“Whatever.” I shrug, kicking at the floor with the toe of my shoe. “You have to tell the police.” If Dieter doesn’t, then I will, though he’d probably then deny it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him frowning, his expression so sad it looks as though he’s in pain. But as I watch, his sadness morphs into something else—anger.

“I just saw him! Like for one fucking second. I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t important, and they’d have dragged me in and questioned me for nothing. I. Don’t. Know. Anything. Okay?”

“Every little bit of information is important.”

If it was so unimportant, why did he feel the need to tell me when he was hanging over the river, scared he might die?

“Fuck you.”

I raise an eyebrow and stare at the floor some more. “I don’t believe you.”

“That I want to fuck you?” He laughs. “Not in a million years.”

“No. I don’t believe it’s not important.” I look at him. “You feel guilty about something. It’ll get worse the tighter you hold it in.”

Feeling heavier than wet sand, I walk away. If I come again, maybe I’ll bring him some flowers.

HOSPITALS ARE
made of corridors—walkways that hold everything together. I get lost. I want to get lost. It’s easier than you imagine.

I end up back near A&E. Then I remember Demi and head quickly away in another direction. It’s doubtful she’d remember me, unless she got in trouble for losing me—then she probably wouldn’t forget so easily.

I should just go back to my nest and sleep. I’m not sure what wandering around like this is achieving. My shoulder is aching so badly that I’m grinding my teeth.

Tiredly I slump against a cold white wall at the bottom of a narrow echoey stairwell. Outside it’s snowing again—fairy-tale London, all cold and bright and glittering. Except I’m not sure how we find our happy endings out there. No knight is going to ride up on a white horse to save us. No prince or princess is strong or brave enough to stand up against evil. The sharks keep swimming. No one wants to get in the water with them. Not even the police.

Quick, quiet footsteps startle me and instinctively I step away from the wall and into the shadows beneath the stairs. I have no real idea why I’m hiding. All I do know is the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end and my heart is hammering.

The footsteps are close and fast—someone rushing down the stairs. As they round the corner, I can see they’re tall. I can see a white lab coat, gray trousers, and soft leather shoes.

That’s what startled me—whoever it is barely makes a sound. I can’t even see their head until they start walking down the corridor. But my breath catches all the same. It’s the way he walks, more than anything.

When you’ve followed someone for hours, you know every detail about the way they walk. Everything else, from his barely there hair—no hat in the hospital—to the way his left arm swings out, is secondary. I close my eyes, picturing him in his long black coat walking down the embankment, and I step out of the shadows to follow him.

Dollman walks with purpose, always, and he walks fast, navigating the packed corridors of A&E and out across the snowy car park to a smaller hospital building—a lab.

That is where I lose him.

By the time I’m through the entrance, the corridor in front of me is empty and I’ve no idea where he’s gone.

There must be about twenty doors, all closed. He could have gone through any of them. I head down the corridor anyway, hoping to feel something, some clue, maybe an echo of him or something, like I’m a psychic detective in a TV drama.
Where are my superpowers now, Micky?

If I could just find out Dollman’s name, I would have something. Something I could give to the police. It would be better than breaking into the possibly alarmed warehouse flats up in Chelsea, where he might not even live.

Every door here is marked with a name like Pathology or a few letters and numbers that mean nothing to me. They all have swipe card entries. The harsh overhead lights hurt my eyes and I blink tiredly in the brightness.

I’m almost at the end of the corridor when a door opens behind me. The sound is just a hushy whisper of air as if someone is trying very hard to be quiet. Curious, I start to turn my head, but an arm comes around my shoulders cutting off my airway, and a large hand covers my mouth so I can’t shout.

Panic surges through me and I go berserk, kicking and struggling as a body much stronger than mine drags me backward into a small room full of books.

“If you shout, it’ll be the last thing you do,” a voice says coldly in my ear.

I’m dumped unceremoniously on the floor, and the door slams shut behind me. Dollman glares down at me, straightening the shirt and tie he’s wearing beneath his white lab coat. He quickly tucks his name tag into his shirt pocket.

For a second I’m too shocked to do anything but stare up at his skull-white face and gasp some much-needed air into my lungs.

The immediate danger seems to have passed, though my heart is still tripping over itself as if I’m running across the common as fast as I can. My shoulder demands my attention—pain lancing through it like hot wires being forced into my skin. The agony makes me grit my teeth as I struggle to my feet. The door is right behind me—however much it hurts, I’m ready to run.

“Sit down,” Dollman orders, pulling out a metal chair from behind a desk I didn’t see at the back of the room.

I edge backward. He’s stronger than me, taller, and I’m in pain, but I can put up a pretty good fight. And I will shout and scream and yell if he comes one step closer.

“For fuck’s sake,” he hisses. “I know you’ve been following me. Have a fucking seat and let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?”

I don’t know how he knows I’ve been following him. Perhaps he means right now through the hospital.

Holding his gaze, I shake my head. I take another small step backward and reach out until I can feel the door behind me. I’m not going to turn away from him, so I blindly search for the door handle I know is there somewhere—
has to be there somewhere
!

“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Some strange combination of the slow, careful way he says it and the awful fear I’m feeling makes me laugh, just once—a loud, bright, terrified hiccup of sound.

My eyes are as wide and shocked as Dollman’s.

“You look cold,” he says.

He reaches for a switch on the wall and a heater somewhere blasts to life, warming the room with hot air.

I still can’t find the door handle. My panic is building again.

“This is my office,” he says. “I study things.” He cocks his head to the side as if he’s demonstrating how he does that.

“Like what?” I ask unsteadily, my finger reaching the doorframe and searching higher. Maybe this is my one-and-only chance to confront him.

Dollman smiles. It makes me feel cold, and I shiver despite the heat blasting into the room.

“Lots of things.”

He steps toward me and my hands scrabble across the wood of the door.
Nothing.
I turn, see the door handle, touch it, and—

“Go ahead,” he says. “You’re frightened. You think I’m going to hurt you or do something bad in the place where I work, in a hospital, with dozens of people in the rooms either side of us.”

“Yes,” I say. I open the door. The corridor is empty. Dollman makes no move to stop me rushing out.

“How about we take this opportunity to be civil and ask each other one question?” His voice is so close behind me it sends shivers down my spine.

I should run, get out of the water.

What am I doing?

You’re swimming with sharks
, a little voice says. Well, if I am swimming with them, I might as well come at them head-on, spear out.

I spin around. “Did you kill Dashiel?”

“GO AND
sit down.” Dollman reaches around me and pushes the door shut. It clicks quietly.

I remain right next to it, my hand ready to reach for the handle again. Dollman backs slowly away until he’s leaning against the desk.

“So you follow me at night because you think I killed someone.”

I notice he doesn’t make it a question. It’s as though he doesn’t want to lose his chance.

This is a game, I realize. Just not one I want to play.

“Did you?” I watch him through my hair.

“One question.” He holds a bony finger up and his face splits into an eerie grin. His eyes are expressionless. Cold. “Perhaps you should tell me why you suspect I might have.”

You’re creepy. You frighten people with your weird questions. You’re a shark.

“Spit it out.”

But I can’t. The words won’t come.

Dollman yawns, looking bored. With a lazy shrug, he pushes himself away from the desk.